Larry Chase wrote a post on this last month that really stuck with me. He talks all about how being cavalier in business isn’t worth the potential consequences. Because you can’t just ask for forgiveness and expect the slate to be wiped clean. It’s a lesson that I wish more businesses and brands understood.

• Signing me up to your newsletter because I handed you a business card at a conference – cavalier.
• Releasing features with a “we know better” attitude and then ignoring the outcry you knew would come – cavalier.
• Cold-calling me without at all targeting your sales pitch or knowing who I am – cavalier.
• Expecting trust instead of earning trust – cavalier.

And customers won’t put up with it. It doesn’t matter if you say, “you’re sorry”. Their impression of you is that you’re a jerk. That you tried to take what wasn’t yours. And that you’re more concerned with yourself than the privacy or wants and needs of your users. That’s not a brand people are going to do business with. [You really should change that retweet feature, Twitter.]

If you’re still living by the “do now, apologize later” approach to business, then you’ve let this whole social media thing go right over your head. Your customers probably want to engage and talk to share with you…but you still have to ask their permission before making that assumption. They’d probably like your newsletter, but sign them up without their consent and you’ll see that hell hath no fury like a scorned socially-savvy consumer.

Your customers are far more connected than they used to be. They’re more vocal. They know that you have people out there listening. So when you violate them by being cavalier about their needs, they get loud and tell their entire network. You haven’t just stolen the privacy of one person; you’ve stolen it from their 1,500 followers, as well. You don’t just have to apologize to one person; you have to apologize to the whole lot. Being seen apologizing 1,500 times  hurts your brand. It makes it undeniably weaker. Make it a habit and you won’t recover.

Stop acting like an unruly kindergartener. If it’s sticky, wet and not yours, don’t touch it. And if you want to touch it, ask for permission first. Today’s world is like direct marketing on steroids. Yeah, we’re all social and informal and friendly…but you still need to ask for permission before entering a room. You still need to build that relationship and prove to your customers that you’re worth their time. Spamming with a newsletter I never asked for so you can get out your marketing agenda will burn more bridges than it will build. You should just go sit in your time out chair now. Because no one wants to deal with you.

Why is it no longer easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission? Because social media is permission marketing. It’s the price of admission. Always having to say “you’re sorry” does nothing but destroy your brand and label you a bully in the eyes of your consumer.  Before you throw a rock through someone’s window, ask them if they wouldn’t mind opening up the door.

Pretend PubCon never ended (man up, liver!). You’re still in Vegas. You’re having fun. You’re dancing. You’re partaking in some adult beverages. It’s 5 in the morning when you finally decide to stumble back to your hotel room to pass out. Groggy, with a headache, you wake up the next morning feeling content and still gigging in your head about all the fun you had last night. Until you turn over. AND THERE’S A STRANGER IN YOUR BED! Someone you’ve NEVER SEEN before. What the hell happened last night? CONTROL Z! Crap!

It’s jarring. To suddenly see someone you don’t know in your sacred space. That’s how I feel about the new Retweet Feature on Twitter.  Not because I’m having a “Facebook moment” where change freaks me out, but because they just ruined and violated some of the core ways people use Twitter. The ones users had created themselves.

Here are a few of my issues with the new retweet feature. Ask yourself: has Twitter forgotten where it came from?

It puts strangers in my stream

Now when someone in my network retweets something, I don’t get their avatar. I get the avatar of the person being retweeted. Ev assures me that I’ll “get used to this”, that it will “be a welcomed change”, and that there were lots of good reasons for it, but unfortunately for him, I disagree.  And I’m not alone. According to one poll, only 6 percent of respondents like the change as is. Showing the unfamiliar avatar does not give me “more context” for the tweet. It gives me less because I don’t know this individual. If I were to see Rae’s avatar, I’d know to trust the content. I’d know it already passed the snuff test. When I see someone else’s avatar, I’m thrown off and confused. Will I get used to it? No, I’ll simply learn to ignore things from people I don’t know. They’re now ads that I’ll tune out. Celebs like Justine Bateman found the change so jarring that she accused these strangers of being “shitheads” spamming her. There goes any value I once had from retweets. Or my ability to think about Mallory Keaton without giggling. The point is, using someone else’s avatar loses that trust factor. In social media, it’s always about trust.

It takes away my ability to add my own commentary

Realize that it’s the little and the silly things that your users love about you. Being about to add “that’s cool” or “zomg awesome!” may sound like a really trivial thing if you’re an CEO looking down…but your users live for it. That’s why they retweet stuff – to share the link but to also add their own sauce and flavor. It’s what Twitter is based on – the conversation between users. The new retweet feature doesn’t allow me to add my own comments. I’m stuck simply parroting back what was already said. Redefine the definition of what retweeting is and you limit the amount of content being passed around.

The new features also assumes that RT’ing something always means that you agree with it. That it’s a Google-esque “vote” for that content. That’s not the case. Sometimes I’m retweeting things because I think the content is moronic and I want to add my own commentary and point it out. I don’t get that right anymore.

It takes away my visibility in my own network

It does me no good to find good content and retweet it if I’m not getting credit for it. Sorry. Let’s not pretend that a good deal of retweeting is not motivated by ego. THIS IS THE INTERNET! That’s why people share content to begin with. To show everyone else how smart and savvy and clever we are. Twitter just took away my finder’s fee.

Where’s the motivation now?

It excludes people who want to play

How do you create a feature that a large segment of your users can’t even use?

They changed the definition of retweeting

Now when you retweet something, you’re ‘liking it’ the way you do on Facebook. You’re not creating something new and of value, you’re simply attaching your meta data to something that already exists. It’s no longer a separate tweet. Andrew Mueller thinks this was done to bring value to Bing and Google. I agree with him. He doesn’t like the ‘we know best’ tone Ev takes in his post to explain the decision. I agree with him. They took about the flexibility of retweeting without giving users anything of value to make up for it. Obviously this wasn’t done for us. It was done for whatever master plans Twitter has. That’s fine. Until you disrupt my life with no benefit. If I’m going to be jerked around and made to jump through hoops, there at least better be something of interest on the other side. Otherwise I’m just going to beat you with the hoop.

There’s a point in every company’s time line where they stop listening to users and start thinking they know best. This is usually the point where early adopters die off and when sites become more complicated instead of smartly scaling themselves down. People don’t want fancy functionality. They want the box. They want to be able to retweet by hand and add their own thoughts. According to Ev, old retweeting is still “allowed” (wow. thanks, Ev!). However, I still have followers who will try out the new way and insert possible muggers, thieves and puppy killers into my stream. Twitter has now left me in a really uncomfortable position – let the strangers in and give up the sanctity of my network or block retweets from people in my network. I don’t like how that feels. I don’t like any of this.

Twitter, your new retweet feature sucks.  #justsayin

“If I tell my Facebook friends about your brand, it’s because I like my friends – not because I like your brand.”

No. Read that again. But take it in his time.

People don’t care about you. They care about helping themselves and their network. Come to terms with that.

A lot of businesses are under the assumption that people share their content because of how awesome their company is. As if people need them or their brand. That couldn’t be further from the truth. People share content because it makes THEM look awesome. It feeds THEIR ego to share information, to pass on something people hadn’t heard before, to be the one in on the punch line. That’s why they share it. It’s simply in your best interest to help them share it.

Over at Social Media Explorer, Jason Falls pointed me to a really interesting new study released by SocialTwist (they make the Tell-A-Friend widget) that offered some pretty worthwhile stats about how people share information. The data was collected after tracking the “anonymous” behavior of 10 million referral messages from the Tell-A-Friend widget. I thought some of the highlights were worth sharing and taking a look at.

From the data:

• Social media revolution aside, 59 percent of users share via email. Twenty-five percent share via IM.
• Facebook is the most popular social network to share content online. LinkedIn is the lowest.
• Bookmarking sites like Delicious are losing steam.
• Only nerds like us are using Gmail, GTalk and Google bookmarking to share content. Normal people aren’t so impressed.
• Twitter sharing has increased 23x over the past year…bringing it to a whopping 1 percent.
• Yahoo Mail is the top content sharing channel with 26 percent.

Let’s get this out of the way: Is Social Twist’s data somewhat skewed? Definitely. For example, Twitter has some seriously low numbers due simply to how people use Twitter. If you’re going to share a post on Twitter, you’re not going to use the Tell-A-Friend widget. You’re going to drop your link into a URL shortening and THEN tweet it so you can benefit from the stats. However, I do think the data provided paints an interesting look into how “normal people” share content online and how they’re doing it in ways and channels you may not have realized.

For example, it’s interesting to me that people are predominantly sharing content via IM and email. It’s not through social networks. I’m sure that’s heavily impacted by the fact that everyone has an email address, while not everyone has a social networking profile – but look at how personal people still take sharing information. You have to really like something (or someone) to send it via email. You can get away with sending crap over Twitter every once and again, but if you spam someone in email, they’ll hate you for life. And your children.

And the social network that sees the most sharing? Facebook. Again, one of the more personal outlets. Perhaps this simply says something about the demographics of the sites that use the Tell a Friend widget, but maybe not. I considered how I share content that really appeals to me – the stuff that I share because it really hit home with me  – and I realized that email and Facebook are how I do most of my sharing, as well. It’s not through Twitter. I may use Twitter to broadcast content or be useful, but it’s not how I share information that’s personal to me.

If you have some free time today, use it to get out of your own away.

Companies spend a lot of time today trying to be sexy. Trying to push content on the hottest social networks and to be everywhere at the same time. Sometimes, all you have to do is to get out of your own way and let people share content the way they naturally want to.

Go to Quarkbase and drop your URL in. Take a look at how people are sharing your content, what sites/types of sites are most popular and who’s doing the sharing. Put in a URL for one of your competitors and note the same thing. Use SEO for Firefox to see where your best content is already being shared and the kinds of stuff people like sharing. Any surprises? Any way that you can curve your efforts to make your content more-friendly to those channels or to become viable on new ones?

If you weren’t allowing people to share content via email because you assumed no one was using it, perhaps its time you make that option available. Maybe people want to print your content and share it that way. Maybe they want to save your logos so they can use them on their own sites to say good things about you. Let them do that.

Find out HOW people are sharing your content and then make it easy for them to do that. Empower them to do that.

Just call me Obama.

You just looked over your shoulder and had a mini panic attack, didn’t you? It’s okay. Your secret’s safe with me. Back to your cubicle porn.

But really, does your CEO know what you’re doing in social media? What about the rest of the organization? Do they get it or would they look at me funny if I was to ask them about the company Twitter account? If they would, you may have a problem. In fact, you most definitely do.

There’s been a lot of buzz this morning over the news that Barack Obama has never used his Twitter account. Despite his being heralded the Social Media President and constantly congratulated for his use of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to rally his troops, Barack Obama has never, personally, authored a tweet. When he tweeted moments after winning the election, that wasn’t him. He was guy kawasaki’ing it. When he tweeted he was ‘humbled’ winning the Nobel Peace Prize, again, just guy kawasaki’ing it. He wasn’t there. He was off doing important things. Presidential things, I bet.

Fine. I think we can all agree that Barack Obama probably has better things to do than tweet. Personally, I’d rather him be running the country and ending all those pesky wars. Let’s not look at the CEO of America. Let’s look at the CEO of your company. Or hell, even the kid you have bagging groceries. Do they know what’s going on?

I follow a lot of local establishments on Twitter. In fact, a good percentage of my Twitter follows are local. I’m one of those people who gets off on the “we just took the pie out of the oven” type tweets. They work on me. They work so well that I’m practically drooling on my keyboard. But they STOP working when you show me there’s an organization disconnect. When I take the bait, go into your store, and you tilt your head when I bring up how effective your Twitter account is because you’ve NEVER HEARD OF TWITTER. You “just bag groceries”. You “just work the front desk”. It’s “another department” that handles social media. And now I’m suddenly left feeling awkward. Once again, I’m the girl that spends too much time on the computer while you have a “real job” and “real friends”. Screw you. I get enough of that from my father.

Not to throw out buzzwords, but it’s an authenticity thing. If Barack Obama has never tweeted, then I question that he understands what it’s about or what people are doing in his name. I wonder if he’s as savvy as he says he is or if he just has really good people working for him. Does he have to “get it” as the President? No. But don’t pretend you’re the one that’s tweeting either. If it’s not you on your Twitter account, it’s cool. Just tell me that. Like Britney does. And if social media is your platform, then maybe you should just send out one tweet to say you did it. Just for giggles.

If you’re a company getting involved in social media, then you have a responsibility to make sure that EVERYONE in your organization knows what you’re doing. Even if they’re not all engaging, they should know that it exists. They should get the talk and know the rules. When I’m in line and making small talk with the cute guy at the register, he should know the company at least has a Twitter account when I bring it up. He should be able to talk about it. Because the minute he looks at me funny, I know that social media isn’t built into your organization. It’s something that’s locked up in marketing. Or it’s control by people on a leash. That’s not authentic. That shows me I was once again in a relationship with someone that doesn’t exist. Do you KNOW how many times I’ve had a George Glass in my life? Faking entire relationships is exhausting.

Social media is one of those that you either do or do not, there is no try. And if you do it, everyone has to do it. Otherwise, it just doesn’t work. Everyone needs to be tuned in and at least have a working knowledge of what’s going on and how it works. It’s a culture thing; you have to have one. Otherwise people feel a little lied to. Personally, I don’t care that Barack hasn’t tweeted. It’s enough for me that he knows it exists. But if I talk to one of your employees about your social media account, regardless if that employee is the CEO or the grocery bagger, they better know what I’m talking about.  If not, you’re just another George Glass in my life.

Matt Cutts is up on stage. Nathan Buggia is listed as being the Bing dude…but that’s not Nathan on stage. We’ll see if I can get a name.  It’s kind of a lame “smackdown” when you just have two people up on stage, isn’t it?   The other guy is Sean Suchter. Hey Sean. I wish we had more search engines. Someone create an engine that doesn’t suck. Sound good?

Oh, I think they’re starting.

Sean is up first. He says the goal of Bing is to address unmet problems in search. A quarter of clicks come back to the SERP. Almost half of search sessions need refinement and half the time is spent on long quieries. They’ve seen times where one session is lasting multiple days.  He says the results he’s seen so far have been encouraging. There’s been great user growth.

Since the launch:

• 80 million unique visitors
• 9.4 market share growth
• 41 percent unaided awareness
• 14 percent perception

They think they have a lot of legs.

Since Bing’s release they’ve done a lot of innovation and added new features.  Some of them are visible to the end users.

Visible Improvements:

• Visual Search: Seeing lots of great user response. People like it. They’re able to get to the products they want much faster.
• UX Innovations: They now have a hover preview. If you hover on a result, you get a deeper look into the site and some structured information.  The content is automatically generated. If you don’t like the presentation in the hover preview, there are tags to turn it off. There are also tags should Google adopt it.

Back end improvements

MSNBot 2.0B

• Deprecate MSNBot V1.1
• Only MSNBot 2.0 should be visible
• 2x-3x more crawling capability Web wide
• More crawling helps in freshness
• Easy to throttle the traffic either ways, just tell us based on your existing traffic. Some site want them to increase download rate. Other sites want them to reduce it.

What is Spam?

Anything done with the intent to rank higher by manipulating the search engine without adding any value will be perceived as spam. We want to best content for the user for a given query. Anything done to disrupt this effort will be neutralized and even punished.

If you’re worried about your content being included or excluded, go to the support tools. They’re available at bing.com/toolbox.

He’s going to do some real-time SEO. He wants people to tweet with the hashtag #mattshair to see how quickly we can rise to the top of the PubCon list using Bing’s new Twitter.   It ended up working, though not as quickly as Sean would have liked. Better luck next time, Bing.

Time for Matt Cutts and his shaved head. He asks how many people still have a hangover at 4:30pm and A LOT of people raise their hands. Hee! He says they’ve been having a good time at PubCon.

What has Google done for users lately?

New things for users this year

• Chrome
• Android
• Wave

All of these have large open source components.

He talks about the Google Music OneBox. People can play MP3s right in the search results and then buy it for 99 cents. You can also use it to search for lyrics. Yeah, you could do that with Ask back in the day. Then Ask died. I hate you, Barry Diller.

He uses Google Squared to do a search for [las vegas shows] and shows how you get a bunch of pretty cool stuff.  I hate to say, Google Squared is pretty cool. That’s one I like playing around with. He also throws in [social networking sites] and it brings up a bunch of different social networking sites that people probably wouldn’t have heard about it. The competition on those networks is probably a little less fierce, which he says makes them valuable. There’s probably also no traffic, which would make them, you know, less valuable. :)

He plays around with Google Social Search and shows how it allows you to get answers directly from your network. In order to opt into Google Social:

1. Make a Google Profile [Danger! Danger! Danger!]
2. Add links to Twitter, FriendFeed, your blog.
3. Opt-in to the Social Search experiment at google.com/experimental

Wonder Wheel – Matt calls this a fantastic way to do keyword research. Type in [pubcon] and it will show you all sorts of related stuff, and then you can click on something on the wheel and a whole new area of keywords will show up. It’s built in Flash so the technology is pretty neat. It’s a fun brainstorming tool.  It’s like a mind map.

What has Google done for Web developers lately

Go to code.google.com/speed to help you speed up your site.   It will show you where the latency is coming on your site when trying to load a page.  He hints that people at Google really want to use site speed as a factor in rankings. They’re not using it right now, but they want to be.  They want search to be like a magazine. Google wants to make the Web fast. 2010 is a great time to pay attention to speeding up your site. HINT. HINT.

code.google.com/closure:  Matt says the Google Reader team had 2 megabytes of…stuff.  They used Closure and then they had 513 kilobytes. They gzipped that and they had 184 kilobytes. I’m assuming that YOU know what that means. I, do not.

Other Tools:

• Google Web Toolkid.
• AJAX Libraries API

What has Google done for webmasters lately?

rel=canonical

Ignore URL parameters: You can log into GWC and tell Google a parameter you want them to ignore. Yahoo was doing this first and Google implemented it to make life easier for webmasters.

Fetch as Googlebot:  Launched a few weeks ago. You prove that ou own a site and then you can say “fetch this page” and Google will show you exactly what Google saw, http headers and all.

Better Malware Warnings

Message Forwarding: If Google has a message for you, they’ll now send  you and email so you don’t have to check in every day. It just makes life easier.

Keyword Details: If you’re seeing the keywords on your site, you can click on them and see the URLs for those keywords.

Google doesn’t hate SEOs and they don’t think that all SEO is wrong. There are plenty of great white hat things people can do to make their site more crawlable and discoverable. They made a SEO Starter Guide so you can give it to your clients and tell them that not all SEOs are criminals. [Nice word choice, Matt]

What’s the latest with Caffeine?  They’re not going to roll it out until AFTER the holidays. Fear not.

He thinks hacking and malware is going to get a lot worse. So watch it.

Why is Google better than Bing?

Matt: Google is fresher. It’s more comprehensives. It’s more relevant. And the UI is faster.

Is the nofollow info really accurate?

Matt: We’ve certainly been very forthright.  They want nofollow to be dropped from the link graph.

With Yahoo, can you beat Google?

Sean: I think we can beat Google no matter what.

Matt: Competition is good. He wants competition. He wants people to keep Google on its toes. He wants Bing to compete fairly. As long as its on an equal playing field, he’s glad. But he thinks Google has done the best that it can and they’ll keep doing that.

Is there a possible third engine?

Matt: There’s still a bunch of engines that haven’t given up. But there’s also a ton of engines doing vertical searches. He thinks that’s really  healthy because sometimes those individual tools can do a better job than a traditional search engine. He also likes that there’s a lot of innovation in search in general.

Is search.twitter.com a competitor, a scare or something you’ve embraced?

Sean: If you look at our bing.com/twitter you can do raw seach for tweets with it but it also has the top links. They think it’s terribly useful.

Matt: The value of Twitter to him is that it lowers the bar for regular people to make content. It brings a lot of cool things into the mix. It’s the extra content that now exists.

What do you see happening with local?

Matt: They just released Ground Truth. Instead of taking 8 or 9 months to correct a business listing, they can do it in 2 weeks. There are some people on his team moving to the Maps team to try and combat spam.

Sean: They’ve extracting a lot of local meaning from things.

Does Google and Bing penalize for buying links or penalize?

Matt: we can do both.

Sean: We don’t generally know whether a link is bought or not. We don’t have direct knowledge of that. We know whether the link is adding user value or not.  The effect that we give the link depends on how much user value it’s adding.

Matt: They don’t think of paid links as useful as editoral links. They’d make those links not count. Whenever you’re selling links, it’s much more visible and a lot easier to tell.

Will the Caffeine update roll out AJAX results?

Matt:  Google has bee doing AJAX search results.  You fill in a keyword phrase and it does an AJAX query and pre-populates the page without changing the URL. It happens faster.  If you’re not careful, though, it can break referrals. T he AJAX change is unrelated to the Caffeine change. He expects it to continue over time.

You say Google tries to return the most relevant results. Logically, if you define relevance and then you measure it, you’re always going to be the most relevant. Deeper thinking there are factors getting in the way of returning the most relevant results right now?

Matt: It turns out if you put everybody in this room into the rating experiment  and ask them for the ideal search results, they won’t agree.  They agree to about 80 percent.  They look at bad sessions, complaints, dissatisfied feedback form. They keep their eyes open a lot of different ways to get that feedback.

Two links on a page, one is nofollow’d – is the other nofollow’d too?

Matt:  He doesn’t know. He’ll check.

And we’re out of here! Thanks so much for hanging out with us this week.  You’re the best and hope the coverage was useful.

We’re gearing up to hear some sketchy folks talk about being sketchy and tracking other sketchy people on the Internet.  Leading the crazy are Michael Gray, Michael Streko, Matt Siltala, and Andy Beal.  Michael Gray and Michael Streko on the same panel.  [nervous chuckle] Let’s, um, see how this goes, eh?

Up first is Matt Siltala.

I am brand new to all of this – where do I start?

• Hubs: Find and Identify the “easy ones”. Places to find content ideas, links, sites that will help with KW research and sites linking to more than one competitor
• Anchor Text: Find and identify everything there is to know about how the competition ranks for the words they do.
• Unique domains linking in:  find and identify to get a better idea of the work that is ahead of you to get equivalent rankings.
• Strong Content: Find and identify the strongest pages of competitors.

Hubs: The easy ones to snoop on

• press: how is the competition using press? this can help generate ideas by keeping up with trending opportunities, linking opportunities, as well as seeing how the competition is using press for SEO, social marketing, etc.
• review sites: Where are your competitors getting talked about? Who is writing about them? How are these reviews getting done? Blog posts? Videos? Images? The way you search does make a difference.  [The search he uses in his screen shot is for [picnic baskets]. I have now nicknamed him Yogi Bear.]
• forums: Find out what people are discussing in your industry. Although there are many forums out there that nofollow, there are plenty out there that do and that could be a great source for link building, discussion ideas and topics.
• local: What, if anything, are your competitors doing LOCAL wise? Do some research and learn how to gain valuable citations that will help you dominate search.
• directories: (I know, I know) but its very important to find the sites that are linking to more than one competitor.  It’s also a great tool for keyword research and finding “niche” places to gain links from.
• article sites: Another great way to do keyword research, generate content ideas and see how they are using these sites for link building.

Anchor Text and the Allinanchor: Search Operator

This search operator is still important for researching the competition because it shows the sites that have high number of inbound links with specific keywords. This helps you keep a better eye on your progress as well as snooping on how the competition is doing.

He does a search for [allinanchor: picnic baskets].  Now that you know the sites that are on top for using “allinanchor”, you can do a search with those sites and the keywords that you are targeting.

Site Comparison Tools

• Majestic SEO
• Compete
• Raven
• SEO for Firefox

Strong Content

One way to use SEO for Firefox is to use it to check out your competitors’ strongest pages. He loves it for that.  You can go in and evaluate every single page.  You can see what’s ranking well, what’s working…and do it better. He also likes using Google search operators.

Next up is Michael Gray.

How to Crawl Up Your Competition’s Butt

• Quarkbase: Once you put your URL in it will tell you the most recent and the most popular pages from a certain site that have been submitted. From that point, put your competitor’s domain in. Search by “submitted on” or “submitted by” to see where they’re submitting their content and who’s doing the submitting.
• Twitter: See who’s talking about the particular domain. Put the domain name in, the user name, any keywords or brand names they use.
• Topsy: Another Twitter search engine. Lets you know who else is talking about their content or submitted it. You want to look for patterns
• Bit.ly: It not only gives you the ability how many people clicked on your click, but how many people clicked in all. You can delve a little deeper to see what times of the day it was the most popular and who retweeted it.
• TweetMeme: Count of most popular things that are going on. It will give you the most popular URLs.
• SocialMention: Aggregation service. Looks for what people are doing across different blogs. Gives you how many times they were talked about, the time frame, sentiment analysis, etc.
• StumbleUpon: See if there’s a network of people looking at your stuff. See who’s interested in your stuff. Look for patterns. Who are starting things off and who’s doing the retweeting. You have to do a bit of social engineering. Look for the weak spot in.
• Klout: Shows you who they’re listening to and who’s listening to them.

Automate Notifications and Research

Take all your RSS and add them to an iGoogle dashboard to create your own reputation monitoring dashboard.  Marty Weintraub wrote a great post on exactly how to build that over at Aimclear.

Plan of Action

• Research how, where and when your competition is engaging in social media.
• Look for points with high levels of engagement or other success metrics.
• Dissect their network, looking for their inner circle.
• Join their network or build your own.
• Automate it where you can.

Next up is Michael Streko.

Use Incompetence to your Advantage

• Misspellings & Outdated information: Look for instances where potential linkers are displaying content that either has misspellings, is inaccurate or just out of date. Update the content on your site and then steal links by asking people to link to your version instead since it’s more authoritative.
• Subscribe to their RSS feed

If it’s on the Web, it’s fair game.  If you don’t know how to block someone from coming into one of your test areas, it’s inbound for your competition to come scope out what you’re doing. What they hide from the engines is your advantage.

Know Their Presence

• Monitor their social activity.
• Use alerts to your advantage
• Organic and paid keyword tracking
• Use SEM Rush

Use Tools To Compete: Watch Alexa ranking. Know their Comcast Score. Use QuantCase, if available – not everyone’s on it, but if they are, take it.

Setup Similar Sites: Open communication as a sock puppet site.   Request link exchanges. It will give you open communication with them.  Know your competitor, don’t be a dick to them. Be a little dick, not a big dick.

Become an Affiliate: Know how much they’re are willing to pay. Figure out their mark up.

Advertise on their site: AdWords will give you a semi accurate reading of their traffic.

Next up is Andy Beal.

He says if you like what you hear, tweet about it. His name is @andybeal. If you don’t like it, he says his name is @lisabarone. Harsh, Andy. Harsh.

What: Track competitors news – their company name, the CEO, product names, locations, mentions of new features, etc. Why? You’re looking for new products, new features, media placement, and sympathetic bloggers.

Rants: Tracking their company name + sucks, defectives, crap, poor, dirty expensive. There’s an opportunity there for you to poach their clients, to promote yours as an alternative or even to improve your own product.

Employees: Track their blogs, social profiles, photos, videos, Flickr accounts, Facebook pages, etc.  Why? Loose lips sink brands. Egos ego bragging. There may be damaging evidence. Look for potential hires.

Jobs: look at their job listings.  It will give you information about products they have in development, new locations, lost employees, etc.

Google: Google Alerts give you email or RSS. Do it as it happens, not once a week.  Google Sidewiki. Local listings.

Tweets: Follow their employees, follow the company profile. Set up search.twitter.com alerts. Create private Twitter lists. He has private Twitter lists that he uses to spy on people. You don’t want to be on those lists.

Facebook: Look at the fan page. what kind of content are they putting out? Maybe you can get some ideas.  Who are their fans? Search Posts by Everyone.

URLs: DomainTools.com offers Registration Alerts that will inform you any time your competition creates a new domain name.  With Mark Alerts, it will tell you whenever a domain name uses a particular keyword.

Oodle: Andy’s favorite meta search for job listings. Type in company name, filter it down by location or skillset. They have RSS alert so you don’t even have to worry about it.

Advanced Tools

• Social Mention
• Trackur
• Radian6
• VisibleTechnologies

Back to the session: Up on stage are Sean Jackson, Kenny Hyder, Tony Wright, and Krista Neher.   Let’s do this thing.

Brand Management and Sales

Unless you’re advocating, protecting and defending your brand, you don’t have a strong one. Strong brands have an impact on any organization because they make sales and costs more efficient. With a strong brand it’s easier for customers to move through every stage of the sales funnel. Many times in organizations, the CFO will come up and say, “what are we getting from brand management?” It’s important to integrate brand management into the sales process. If you align your effort back to sales it makes it more effective.

8 Stages of the Sales Funnel

1. Category Awareness
2. Brand Awareness
3. Brand Consideration
4. Brand Preference
5. Purchase Intent
6. Purchase
7. Customer Retention
8. Advocates

Three elements of online brand management – monitor. engage. advocate.

Criteria for Engaging

1. Is it important to my current effort? Will it help you move to the next stage?
2. Can I engage? Do you have the resources to provide?
3. Can I sustain? Can I keep it going for frequency and reach.

There are many ways to monitor: Raven. Trackur. Google Alerts. The problem isn’t finding a tool. The problem is what to look for. Certainly there are things related to proper names. Then you have to consider intent AND sentiment. You have to find the tool that allows you to monitor beyond just proper names.

If you are setting your monitoring up right, engagement is crucial. However, it’s a process-oriented approach.  It’s an investment of time, effort and money. If you’re going to do it, you need to determine rules, procedures and responsibilities.  What stages of the funnel will you respond to? When will you respond? Who will respond? How will you respond?

Once you have your engagement model down, you can start advocating. Advocating is a much softer approach. It’s a function of getting your message out. The  goal of every message is to move them to the next stage of the buying process.  Acknowledge their point AND move viewers toward the next stage. Be honest. You can use pre-made content like lists, How To guides and reviews.

Be aware of bot programs. There are a lot of tools out there that allow you to rapidly respond to people. Do not use them unless you are 100 percent confident that your monitoring includes sentiment. Response and content MUST align to Sales Stage of the receiver.

Reverse the Sales Funnel Against Your Competition

• Set your monitoring for the competition brand. Any time someone mentions that other brand, mention yours.
• Focus on Brand Awareness and Brand Consideration issues.
• Respond with reviews, industry opinion, exclusive offers, etc.
• Your goal is to move them to YOUR brand preference.

Next up is Kenny Hyder.

So your SERP has bad results…you have a bad review on Yelp, there’s a negative news article, there’s a blog rant from some jerk (holla!) or you have a competitor that purchased yourcompanynamesucks.com.  You need to clean these things up because if someone searches for you and sees a bad post about you, they’re going to read that first. And then you’re basically screwed.

If you have a brand that you own, there’s no reason why you can’t dominate the first page of results if you have your focus together.

Tools you can use:

• Your own Web site.
• Blog
• Social Media Profiles
• Niche Sites/Directories

Blogs

Easily rank for brand queries.  Individual posts can be optimized to rank for specific issues/topics.  Launching an Official Blog lets you manage and control all the content coming out for your brand.

Tips:

• Be resourceful
• Have a schedule. Post with purpose.
• Understand how blogs and SEO intersect.

Social Media Profiles

There are hundreds and hundreds of social media profiles out there and they’re great for ranking.  There’s a social media site for everything. There’s a site for music, basketball, cooking, wine, beer, etc. Whatever industry you’re in, there’s a site for that. [I intend on using the "there's a site for that" line as often as I can for the rest of the day.] Social media sites are designed for ranking. Use a site like KnowEm to get signed up on all of them.

Tips:

• Don’t set it and forget it. Engage and be interactive
• Build links to help them rank.
• Remember your purpose.

Key sites: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Naymz, Flickr

Niche Social & Directories

They’re highly relevant and easy to get into.  They’re also easier to dominate. Adds clout to your brand

Tips:

• Set yourself up as an authority. You want to be a resource to everyone else in your industry. Make yourself the go-to person
• Be useful and interactive.
• Use these sites to rank well for the bottom of page one.

Next up is Tony Wright.

“If I tell my FB friends about your brand, its because I like my friends – not because I like your brand. ” Touche.

Why do people complain online. [STOP JUDGING ME!]   They want to be part of a community and recognition from their peers. [Yeeeeah, we do.]

Why do people listen to online complainers? Users put great trust in their social networks. One half said they considered information shared on their networks when making a decision. That proportion was higher among users of 18 to 24.

Why should you care? There were nearly 116 million US user-generated content consumers in 2008, along with 82.5 million content creators. Both numbers are going to climb significantly.

So what do you do? You have to have a plan.

• Who should be involved
• What you should consider
• Brainstorming the worst case scenario
• What will your employees do
• How will you evaluate a crisis
• How will you quantify success

Who should be Involved?

• Marketing: They’re the foot soldiers.
• IT: The minute a crisis breaks and your server crashes, you’re in trouble. When 9/11 happened, the American Airlines site crashed. They needed to re-route things ASAP.
• Upper Management: If people feel they have input, then you’ll have buy in.
• Crisis Consultants: Having someone who understands the landscape of what’s going on and understands what can happen, is incredibly valuable. You need someone like that in house.
• HR:   They have to be involved.
• Representatives from the rank and file: If they know what’s going on, they’re less likely to go rogue and do something stupid.
• Unions: Need buy in on negotiations.

What to Consider:

• Online and offline:  Pay more attention to online, it’s harder.
• Monitoring : You must monitor your brand at all times.
• Mock scenarios: How will you handle each? Think worst case scenarios.
• Technical execution of responses
• Respond Responsibly

Brainstorming Worst Case Scenario

Ideally, your mock worst case scenario will have elements of all aspects involved. Use the worse case scenario as as template for the plan. Develop several based on different criteria, such as physical disasters, financial disasters, ethic disasters, etc.

What will your employees do?

Internal communications is paramount in all crisis communication. Policies must be laid out in advance to advise employees on how they can respond in a crisis.

Employee representatives should be in on the planning to have “ownership” of the plan — especially when Union is involved. Honesty and accountability are the best policies with employees and vendors. If you’re not transparent a lie will come back and kick you in the butt.

Crisis Evaluation

• What is a crisis to the CEO may not be a crisis. Tie the CEO up in the corner. [I'M COMING FOR YOU, RAE!]
• Look at the following factors:
  • Potential reach of crisis
  • Potential revenue loss from crisis
  • Is it a game changer? Is this going to alter your business?
  • Viral likelihood? Will this continue to haunt the company for years to come?

How will you quantify success?

• When is a crisis over? Sometimes its obvious, sometimes not.
• Continue monitoring
• Give your strategy the time it needs to work.
• Always take note of what a crisis did to the company’s reputation and communicate that with all internal sources.

Reputation, Influence and Branding

Reputation, branding and influence are not the same thing but they are connected. Start working on reputation. The others will come if your reputation is good.  Don’t let good branding get in the way of a good reputation. Don’t be the logo police. Monitor for your reputation. Create a formula for keeping your reputation solid – deal with snags as they come.

Next up is Krista.

Like it or not, you have a brand.  A brand is a collection of symbols, experiences and associations connected with a product, a service, a person or any other artifact or entity.  A brand is in the eyes of the customer.  Brand equity is what your brand stands for n the hearts and minds of your audience.

The Internet Changed Branding

• Pre-Internet: brands controlled the message. One way communication.
• Internet: Everyone has a voice. They’re all talking about you and building your brand.

All the branding won’t do anything if your product still sucks.

Principles for How To Manage Your Brand Online

The walls are falling. There’s a lot more transparency within companies.  There used to be rules about who could talk and who couldn’t. Those lines are now blurring.  You need to be consistent.  To be transparent.

Set clear expectations. There are LOTS of social media sites out there right now. Set expectations for where you’re going to play.   A lot of companies have set a high bar with Twitter by responding every second of the day. You may not be able to do that.

Responding to people who love you

Show others that you care. Build  a tribe of passionate users, they will defend your brand for you. She talks a bit about the Motrin debacle and how people defended their brand.  If people are talking about you, it’s because they want to be associated with your brand or seen as an expert about you.  Engage them.

Having people defend you on your behalf is more powerful than anything you could ever say. You don’t have to give people something free if they mention your brand.  That may cheapen the relationship. You have to think about the motivation behind it. If they said they like your brand, they like your brand.

Responding To Negative Comments

Try and understand the root of the issue. And then handle that root.  Instead of trying to just quiet people, try to resolve their issue. If your product sucks and you KNOW it sucks, fix it.

Don’t oppose or try to censor people. Convey a clear, gentle, and friendly image. Respond directly to the issues so that whomever reads the complains also reads the positive reviews.

Six Tips for Dealing With Negativity

1. Humanize your Brand: It’s easier to hate a company than a person.
2. Listen
3. Thank them for caring: By thanking someone and offering to work with them, you can turn it around. Show openness in dealing with the complaint or issue.
4. Be Transparent and Explain: Often a friendly explanation can help.
5. Build a Community of  passionate defenders:
6. Know when to walk away: If someone is flaming your brand, realize when you’re not going to make any headway.

We’re so over time that there’s not even Q&A.  Ah, I gotta run! Please be more forgiving of crazy spellings and typos today, eh?  We’re running at warped speed.

I’m dizzy. Oh noes.  Stupid Vegas flu of death.

This should be a good panel. We have nice list of characters all set to talk about links and how to get them, buy them, and love them in a way that won’t get you smack in the face by Google. With a brick.   Up on stage we have a motley crew featuring Todd Malicoat, Roger Montti, Aaron Wall, and Rand Fishkin.  Let’s get this thing started. I swear to God the room is spinning.

Up first is Rand Fishkin.

Rand says he asked to be kicked off this panel because he doesn’t endorse buying links and he doesn’t do it anymore [Hear that, Google. SEOmoz doesn't buy links. SO KEEP MOVING.]. He offered to go last…but everyone else bullied the moderator into making him go first. Poor Rand. Always the innocent bunny in a pack of wolves.

Unfortunately, the projector is broken so we have no screen. Something about a plug that doesn’t work.  So…we’re doing question and answer first while they send someone to try and fix it. I’ll throw the questions at the bottom.  Back to Mr. Fishkin.

He tries to be very clear about his shift in position about paid links. He doesn’t think not buying links is right for everyone, it’s just what’s right for his clients and for SEOmoz.   Rand says he falls into the “Operator of Interest’ category. Meaning, he’s profiled for being an SEO.

The problem with paid links:

• Algorithmic detection is getting better than ever before.
• Penalties are hard to diagnose.
• Manual link penalties are also a threat
• Google’s’ Webspam team invests (A LOT of) time and resources in shutting down effective paid links. [Agreed. And almost an unhealthy amount.]
• Competitors have significant incentive to report link spam. (Don’t be a rat.)

How he advises clients to spend money to get links

• High Quality UI
• Web page Load Speed [We're suggesting fast servers as a link technique? Someone get Rand a cookie and some warm milk.]
• Invest in user generated content + contributions
• Hire community managers
• Organizing and sponsoring events
• License Content/Technology for nominal fees
• Issuing press releases
• Creating badges and widgets
• Collecting and sharing research data
• Build viral content
• Employ conversion rate optimization on link targeted content
• Remove the marketing wrapper
• Advertise link targeted content
  • StumbleUpon
  • TechMeme
  • Facebook Ads
  • Twitter advertising
  • Sponsored blog ads
  • Individual blog and media sites

Buying links creates an unnatural link profile because you get them in spurts. You want your pattern to look organic.   Paid links work on a rental model. You pay to acquire and keep them. Natural links you don’t have to pay for.  Rand says not to reject paid links not because Google says so but because it’s not the best ROI activity.

Next up is Roger Montti.

You have to understand the risk involved with paid links and what Google is doing to try and find them.

Precautions

Be discrete. Never prematurely reveal who is buying links.  You never know when a White hat nutter may be watching. Not revealing also increases your negotiating power. Reduces exposure of your site for buying links.

What not to do:

• Never directly state you want to buy links  [Roger says "asking people, 'how much for you links' is like asking 'how much are your women?!' omg I DIED]
• Only inquire with sites that are trying to monetize
• Never purchase links from sites that try to monetize too hard
• Never purchase links from sites that are obviously selling links: If they have links in the footer or links on the site not related to the niche – just stay away.  They’re going to be caught and you don’t want to be swept up in that or invite scrutiny to your site.
• Never buy links from sites that have an explicit advertising page
• Never buy links from sites linking out to irrelevant sites

Three Part Negotiation Process

• First Contact: Never reveal the name of your site. Just inquire about advertising/sponsorship rates. Email should be short and direct. Never mention anchor text, link buying, etc.
• Second Contact: Offer a price.  Should you low ball? Yes, sort of.  Don’t reveal the name just yet. Negotiate whether they offer text links. Never respond to overly inquisitive emails.
• Third Contact: Close the deal.

You have to be careful. You don’t want to be outed by a Google fan boy. You have to take measures to make sure your links aren’t going to bring down your site. Understand the risks and then go about the activity in a way that minimizes those risks.

What kinds of links should you buy?

• Run of Site links
• Contributed Articles: They look natural, are cheap, and can enjoy inbound links from other blogs. Never buy from a site that explicitly sells article links.
• Banner Ads: They look natural. It’s advertising, not a link buy. Usually counts as a vote. Easier to negotiate than other forms of links. No anchor text mojo. Lots of on-page SEO mojo.

Where should you buy?

• Find unique opportunities: Who uses your product? Where are your users online? Don’t buy links where competitors already purchased.
• Diversify your backlink profile: Blogs. Web-only magazine sites. Industry associations related to those who use your product. Charitable sponsorships.

Next up is Aaron Wall.

What Media is Pure?

• Rampant mortgage fraud
• Governments lie to start bogus wars
• Student load kickbacks

All of these people made lots of money.  Some got in trouble.

There was a study done on Consumer Web Watch where most searchers showed that they don’t know that sponsored links are paid for. They thought they were colored because they were the most important.

Link Anchor Text

• Variation = less likely to get filtered.  Use keyword modifiers, alternate word forms, plural vs singular.
• Make spammy anchor text look legit: Create spammy titles for SEO then later change them. Domain names influence anchor text.
• Deep links: Work wonders.

Blend in.  Link location matters. The more you can be in content, the better you’re going to do. Links at the bottom of the page are often discounted.

Buy Trusted Links:

• Best of the Web
• Yahoo! Directory
• Industry associations and events
• Barter
• Syndication
• Awards
• Contest
• Buy competing Web sites

Create a cover. As long as you have some good links, the bad ones probably won’t be so obvious.  You should also encourage organic links by:

1. Cumulative advantage
2. Regular editorial voice
3. Community participation
4. Show social proof
5. Beautiful site design
6. Signs of credibility
7. Drive traffic to your best content

Next up is Todd Malicoat.

Link buying feels kind of dirty now. At some point this didn’t become okay. It’s become a semantic issue.   It’s like most women would rather be charmed than picked up.

6 Important Traits to Attracting Links & Love

1. Value
2. Quality
3. Perseverance
4. Success
5. Promise
6. Endurance

Asking for a Link

Asking for a link is like asking to do business.  Don’t call it link buying, call it business development.  Everything has catchy nicknames.  Cloaking is IP detecting.  Don’t make it what it isn’t. Don’t get caught up in the semantic debate.

It’s not an easy proposition to get people to link to your Web site. If you listen to SEOs, there are three links on the Web that actually pass rank.  heh.

How to train link developers

How do you evaluate a link?  Total unique linking domains (he likes the SEOmoz Toolbar and Link Harvester), total # of links, special links, anchor text placement control, site %, co-citations, age of site.

Explain the contradiction of PageRank mattering. ToolBar PR doesn’t mean a lot. If you see a PR 0 it probably won’t be worth as much time as a PR 7, however, we don’t know if the PR 7 is passing juice. Hence, the contradiction.

Show them how to find good starting points and WHY this is important.  Show them how to use creative queries to find high quality links. He likes to start the Google Directory.

Explain how to find contact information. It seems really simple just to look at WHOIS.  You want to send personalized requests. Search the page for the name, an email, the common keywords on the page, etc.  Maybe you can find a phone number. Learn to search the name of a webmaster in order to find an email.

Explain the 12 different link types: Authority, directory, reciprocation, run of sites, one way links from friends, edus, radio, etc.  Know which ones are important and which will be the most valuable to your site.

Use tools for discovery.

Other tips: Use female names when trying to get links. They work better. Use Twitter, IM, Email, Facebook, etc to get in touch with people. Try different communication methods.  Don’t always go in for the kill. Mention the Web sites you’re associated with. Start a dialogue.

When you go in for the link, make sure you’re getting the most out of it. If someone is really receptive, get good citations. Make sure there are no lies in the relationship and your links aren’t getting nofollow’d.

Whats the difference between buying a link and placing a press release on one of the main press release services?

Todd: semantics

Roger: That’s the controversy. At what point is it a paid link and at what point is it advertising?

When buying links people tend to overuse anchor text. Is there a threshold that people should watch for?

Roger: Diversity looks natural – diversity in the kinds of links and the kinds of sites you’re getting the links from. He likes to do it in increments and see how things bounce around in the SERPs.

Grab some orange juice or something. I did.

The question he’s asked most, “So, will you buy my Web site?”    When someone asked you that, you have to think about how much it’s worth. Valuation is a really tricky part of what we do on the Internet.  He can’t tell us what he’d pay for a Web site (drat), but he will tell us how they come up with that number and what they look at.

First off all, what does Internet Brands do? His company builds a platform that hosts Web sites, builds traffic, does optimization, etc. They put about 100 major Web  properties on it so far. Their sites get about 50 million uniques a month.   There are principles that unify everything they’ve done with the company.

Bob shares some pretty awesome (if not, depressing) stats:

All publicly and privately traded Internet companies equal about $350 billion in value. If you stack up all other media in the world, it’s worth LESS than that number. The Internet is now more valuable than anything else.  Of that $350 billion, HALF of it is Google. [Hi. Terrifying.]

Search represents 55 percent of the Internet valuation, followed by Commerce (20 percent), Content (15 percent), Social Media (5 percent), Everything Else (5 percent).

About 56 percent of all Internet visits are to pages dominated by user generated content. The money is flowing where there is commercial intent around the content.

What makes a successful Web site? He says that WE are the WINNERS! I’m telling my mom! 50 million people worldwide have attempted to start an Internet business.  96 percent have failed and abandoned it completely. Only 1 in 200 the two million people trying to make a living on the Internet make more than $50,000 in income.   Only 1 in 600 make more than $250,000 a year.  One in 2,000 make more than $1 million.

Only 40 percent of sites are still successful after five years. [These are the most depressing stats ever.]

5 Factors to being successful on the Web

1. Focus
2. Uniqueness
3. Community
4. Content
5. Monetization
6. Passion (Wildcard)

Why is passion so important?  They think it’s the most important thing on the list. It’s so competitive to stay ahead that you have to work the problem harder and smarter. All the category leaders they’ve looked up have updated their business model more than once. You have to be current on where your users and advertisers are going.

Sites they own:

• ModelMayhem.com – about fashion models.   They get 2,000 applicants a day – includes an essay on why you should be admitted to the site. Of the 2,000, 70 percent are declined. You have be juryed in by 10 moderators in order to be allowed in the community. They have very rigorous criteria to get in.
• FlyerTalk - community about heavy travelers.  More help on this site than any he’s seen. The airlines are very engaged with these customers. They’ve built a really great community. He says its the best one he’s ever seen. There are 80 moderators and there’s a 3 year waiting list to get in. Self-governance, if you can do it, is the best way to go. It’s the way you preserve the passion over long periods of time.

With all the sites that you have going on, how do you keep your focus on any particular one?

Their organization is built into category-based teams. Each category has a team leader. They do a matrix structure. To get the laser-like focus it requires talented general management.  It’s been one of the most intense pieces to work out in the business model.

What does “the people’s Internet” entail?

To capture Web sites that are either not corporately owned or not heavily backed. It’s a business that “a normal person” set up.  They’re thinking of things that started as sole proprietorship or a couple of partners without venture money.

Bob then invites 10 people on the stage with either Blackberry’s or iPhones to break the Google black box. Or something.  Then some other guy comes out. I think he’s a magician. He’s talking like a magician.  We’re playing the “We’ve never met before, right?” game.

He makes audience member pull up Google.com on a laptop.  The audience member’s name is Sanjay Sabnani. Two other people have to think of a subject.  The “people at home” (I think he means us) are supposed to be thinking, as well.     The subject is algebra.

We do a search for, “what is Sanjay Sabnani thinking of”. We hit Search and Google shows us lots of algebra-related queries.  The magician (I’m calling him that now) asks Sanjay who Deena is. Naturally, Deena is his sister.  Sanjay doesn’t look impressed.  I’m not really impressed myself.

Another audience member has to think of a celebrity – he says Peyton Manning. I argue that Peyton Manning isn’t ACTUALLY celebrity.  We ask Google what Alex D. Baker is thinking of.  It shows images of Peyton Manning. WHAT IS GOING ON?

Now he’s making a cigarette float. I am rolling my eyes and sighing like you would not believe.  He’s trying to get the cigarette in this mouth. I’d help him if it meant this would end soon.  Now we’re doing optical illusions.

I’m done.

Leading us through our mission of mayhem are Marty Weintraub and Brett Tabke. There was surprised to be a third but he couldn’t make it. I think that may be the 3rd or 4th canceled speaker today.  That’s sad.

Anyway, get out your paper and Number 2s. Marty is about to take the stage. Lord have mercy on us all. [love you, Marty.]

Dirt Cheap Tactic 1: How to Aggressively Exploit Personalized SERPs

We all know personalized search.  It sucks for SEO because everyone gets different results. The results are being customized for users searching and click behavior. It’s a lot harder to measure organic prominence.

Customized search boosts what you love. If you love Martha Stewart, it’ll reflect that content. It will also boost what you hate. It tends to polarize with a less personalized middle. SEO tactics need to be personalized too wherever you can touch and influence user behavior. Marty wants you on your knees buying something with the credit card in your mouth. Wow. Just…wow.

In 2006 they started linking clients to proposals and scope of service contracts. It helped them vet clients and solidify the brand. Or at least that’s what he THOUGHT it would do. Really, he was just giving away his brand. So they started a blog. There they could use tracking URLs to tell when clients were reading reports.

What does that have to do with SEO?

Now that blog indexes prominently in SERPs, they don’t send links to posts anymore. They send links to the SERPs.  Most users don’t disable personalized search. They don’t even know what it is. Pretty soon their browser puts a disproportionate weight on your blog. Say “search for THIS and click on it” and it will always be your blog that appears. It makes you God of your own world. You can give them the URL over the phone.  Always be ready to tell your customers to search and click for your content.

Not everyone has authority content, so just make up words or use a whole post title that’s really memorable. Use Google against Google’s self to contradict personalized search by impacting user behavior on a more fundamental level.

Dirt Cheap Tactic #2: Leverage the Viral Sweaty Masses to Traffic Offers

The best way to seed viral campaigns is to know what is indigenously viral. Coupons are viral. You can also use coupons for data mining. Drive users to the page, get their data and test it.

Coupons are special to people because they think they’re gonna get money. They download the coupon and then you can get information from them.  From there, Marty talks a lot about IP spoofing and how you should set up employees with four accounts on their computers, with each account having a different IP.  I, um, not even sure I want to know where this is going. :)

Marty says that these coupons with tracking codes provide much, much more traffic than PPC tracking variables.  They found number coupon cope ripping sites that are also stealing their coupons and sending them traffic.  He says to let others think they thought of it and are getting away with something. Participate in the forums, Think of as distribution channels. Promote the forums in SMO.

Dirt Cheap Tactic #3: Chamber of Commerce Link Exchange

Remember Marty’s Fools Gold Link Exchange technique [search for it on that page]? We’re back to that but it has a new name.  He talks about the Duluth Chamber of Commerce, which apparently does some recipricoal link exchange, only they’re not being upfront.  They’re getting their link but then they’re either nofollowing the other site’s link or just not giving the link at all. [I'm not sure which. If you've heard Marty speak, you probably understand my trouble keeping up.] It’s a good way to get YOU links without actually participating in a recipricol link scheme. It’s also, you know, kind of a jerk thing to do to someone.  Allegedly.

Dirt Cheap Tactic #4: This My Suck Sucks Wa.Do.I.Do

Okay, I totally didn’t get where this one was going.  Marty talks about what to do when something big happens and lots of major news outlets want to give you links — only you don’t want them to go to your site because your site sucks.   There was something about using PR Web.  That’s about all I took from that.

Next up is Brett Tabke.

Google generates 80 percent of the search engine referrals.  What happens if you suddenly lose all your Google traffic? Maybe there’s a server error, your site gets banned or just a fluke. Where can you get traffic from?

The traffic is going to have to come from Traditional means like:

Recip Link Exchange: Strategic alliances with sites that compliment each other. You sell spoons, they sell forms. WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

Story Targets – Link Bait: Do a nice story about Site X – they can’t help but reciprocate.

Things to stay away from:

• Fake directories
• Affiliate farms and FFAs
• Top 100 sites
• Awards managers

Press Releases: low cost alternative – local paper.

Contests: Can certainly be repeat traffic generators and good lost leaders. Do your homework first. Be aware of legal issues. Management issues.

Awards: They are old tired, but they work. You know the drill.  They wont a Search Engine Watch Award in 2002. They’ve gotten 20 referrals a day for 7 years.  That’s about $26,000 in ad costs. Use guestbooks, but use them properly. Use the site, say something nice, include your URL if offered.

Affiliate Programs

Email Newsletters: Huge commitment.

Mailing lists

Kids: Kids are awesome at viral marketing. They’re an unseen army of traffic.

Pete and RePete: How may times has a friend forwarded you the “joke of the day”?

Usenet and Forums

Building a Community: not advisable unless you have the manpower and legal team.  There’s also a HUGE learning curve.

Coupons

Giveaways

Social Media: Guy Kawasaki called Twitter a Weapon.  Last year, Brett spent $75,000 to market PubCon. This year they didn’t spend a dime. Brent said that next year they’ll be taking that $75k and hiring a dedicated social media person.That’s flippin’ AWESOME!

Alternative Directories: Topic directories. Investigate the directory. Things to stay away from: